Hello, LA!

I’m culture writer Carolina A. Miranda, and I recently took a quick jaunt to the desert — hotels are cheap in summer — to check out a pair of terrific shows at the Palm Springs Art Museum.

The first, Guadalupe Rosales’ Tzahualli: Mi memoria en tu reflejo, continues the artist’s investigations into Chicano youth subcultures, from exhilarating sites of socialization (dance floors!) to the nocturnal spaces she found quiet after the party was over. (L.A. Times art critic Christopher Knight recently reviewed.)

The second, The Art and Design of Howard Smith, explores the legacy of a Black artist who, running into professional dead ends in the U.S., ended up making a name for himself in Finland. (I got into how he ended up there — an incredible story that involves the CIA — in Alta Journal.) The show reveals a man who imbued every aspect of his life with artful touches — down to the custom lining he created for his leather jacket. Inspiring!

Besides my journey to the desert, I’ve been on other trips:

• Listening to a wild double album by the performance artist The Dark Bob
• Looking at a flag that channels our grim era 
• Reading about the T-shirts of the Jersey Shore

Keep that cursor moving!

The featured image is an installation view of Guadalupe Rosales's solo exhibition at the Palm Springs Art Museum, Tzahualli: Mi memoria en tu reflejo. (Carolina A. Miranda)

SONGS FOR ARTISTS

Performance artist The Dark Bob has a new album out and it's all about artists. (Ryan Zin)

The Dark Bob isn’t entirely certain how the idea to create an album honoring visual artists, and whose sound hopscotches between punk, surf rock, and the musical stylings of Alvin and the Chipmunks, got off the ground. The LA performance artist, who has little use for his birth name, thinks it all started with a tune he wrote in honor of the late conceptualist Mike Kelley, a stripped-down punk number titled “Long Long Way” that features the refrain, “I got the feeling that I’m goin’ down / And it’s a long, long way.”

“He was a friend and someone I miss,” Bob says. The song is a fitting tribute: Kelley was once a member of the experimental “anti-rock band” Destroy All Monsters, that counted among its members painter Jim Shaw and artist/writer/musician Cary Loren.

After writing the song about Kelley, The Dark Bob kept going, penning odes to Marcel Duchamp, LA painter Carole Caroompas, and performance artist John Fleck. He even wrote a song about Bob & Bob, the irreverent performance art duo that he started in the 1970s with collaborator The Light Bob (a.k.a. Paul Velick). That last tune, dubbed “The Fab Two,” sounds like a fusion of a cheerleading chant and a vaudeville ditty. Sample lyric: “They made a record, made a movie / Man their art was super groovy.” 

Bob has collected these very arty tunes about art in the album Ekphrasis Synesthesia: Songs for Artists, which features musical contributions by the likes of guitarist Dave Alvin, drummer DJ Bonebrake of X, and Grammy-nominated musicians like Peter Case and Nels Cline of Wilco. And while the songs are available for streaming, the better bet is the double vinyl album, which features a pair of discs fabricated in eye-popping shades of orange and blue, and a retro-futuristic cover design by collagist Lou Beach. 

“I loved doing a record dedicated to artists,” says Bob. “I had to force myself to stop writing songs.”

A still from The Dark Bob's 1987 short film, Mister Whisker. (The Dark Bob)

This is not the first musical project for The Dark Bob, who, since he came on the scene in the 1970s, has gleefully ignored the boundaries of genre. He and The Light Bob made drawings, played experimental music, and staged mischievous performances on the streets of LA while decked out in suits. “If you think back to that time, it was still a world full of hippies with long hair,” he says. “So we cut our hair and put on suits and that felt very rebellious to us in 1975. And it became like an everyman character for us.”

Working independently, The Dark Bob remains unconfined by borders. He has created paintings, made short films, and regularly takes to the stage. His 1982 album, One Bob Job, inspired by a cross-country trip, now resides in the collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. And this past May, he performed his early ‘80s song “Beirut” in the group show Endurance at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions. The song, inspired by the 1982 Lebanon War, was written by the late poet and LA River activist Lewis MacAdams. The pair were longtime friends — in fact, in 2015, they released an album together called Good Grief!, inspired by MacAdams’ poetry. 

(KCRW had a good interview with the pair when it dropped.)

The Dark Bob performs at LACE in May. (Ulysses Jenkins)

Ekphrasis Synesthesia marries Bob’s appreciation of music and art. “The Disasters of War,” a song that references the Spanish painter Francisco Goya’s 19th century prints about the cruel violence of armed conflict, features orchestral swells and the single lyric, “Mama save me.” Another song, devoted to Abstract Expressionist power couple Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, is a power ballad with a country twang whose lyrics enact the romantic struggles between the two painters — with the Krasner part sung by the vocalist Syd Straw. Says Bob: “It’s like a little play in the middle of the record.”

There are poignant moments, but fun ones, too. “The Museum’s on Fire,” in honor of Pop artist Ed Ruscha, is reminiscent of an a capella commercial jingle — with lines like “Touché Ruscha touché.” It was this tune that was inspired by the songs of Alvin and the Chipmunks. “Ed Ruscha exists beyond the art world, he is part of popular culture,” Bob explains. “And Alvin and the Chipmunks is popular culture.”

With the album out, Bob is now ready for the awards to start landing. “Please make a point of saying that Dark Bob makes a point of comparing himself to Bob Dylan,” he tells me as we conclude our interview. “And he wonders why he hasn’t gotten the Nobel.”

🎙️🎙️🎙️

The Ekphrasis Synesthesia LP is available for purchase at the MOCA Store or from The Dark Bob directly at songsforartistsalbum.com.

ON JULY 4

Molly Tierney, Eight Flags, 2017-present. (Carolina A. Miranda)

The day before Independence, I happened to wander into the Box gallery in the Arts District, and caught the group show Burn Me! shortly before it closed. The gallery is run by Mara McCarthy, who lost her home in the Eaton Fire, and the show reflected on the infernos, literal and figurative, that consume our landscape and our political system.

It was a terrific gathering of works, but I was most bowled over by Molly Tierney’s Eight Flags — a collage of U.S. flags that appear to be singed in some parts and buried under layers of black substances in others. It is a flag for a nation in a moment of unspeakable turmoil, and it felt fitting for a Fourth of July celebrated amid unending ICE Raids.

🚩🚩🚩

AROUND THE INTERNET

Jackie Castillo, Through the Descent, Like the Return, is on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art Los Angeles. (Carolina A. Miranda)

• KCRW’s Madeleine Brand talks to Jackie Castillo, who has a terrific installation on view at the ICA LA involving roof tiles.
• As the Trump administration aims to revoke federal land protections, Chaco Canyon, an important Indigenous archeological site, is at risk.
• Also at risk: the Institute of American Indian Arts.
• The artist who thought her painting was being acquired by Lady Gaga — only to discover that it was an impersonator.
• Catherine Wagley has a great article in CARLA about how scientist Ed Wortz came to find himself at the center of the LA art world.
• A free clinic teaches Angelenos how to repair damaged art and heirlooms.
• A show about Hollywood’s favorite shark — Jaws! — will be opening at the Academy Museum in September.
• Signing off with an essay about how the t-shirts sold at the Jersey Shore tell us everything about the cultural moment.

Thank you, as always, for reading.  🙏

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